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RuneScape:Administrators
Administrators, or Sysops, are editors who have access to technical features that help with maintenance. Those include protecting and deleting pages, blocking other editors, and undoing these actions as well. RuneScape Wiki's practice is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active and regular RuneScape Wiki contributor for a while, is familiar with and respects RuneScape Wiki policy, and is generally a known and trusted member of the community. Administrators do not have any power in-game, as they are not Jagex employees. Any user, administrator or not, can perform functions similar to that of administrators. With every administrative tool (explained below), there is an action associated with it that does not require a tool itself to carry out. One can mark a page for deletion, report vandals for the administrators to block, and report need for other administrative actions even if the user does not have the tools themselves. Users doing so are more likely to be nominated to be administrators by members of the community and more likely to be chosen when they are finally nominated. From early on, it has been pointed out that administrators should never develop into a special subgroup of the community (See the All editors have equal status policy), but should be a part of the community like anyone else only equipped with a few more tools to do some chores that would potentially be harmful if everyone were entrusted with them. The community does look to administrators to perform essential housekeeping chores that require the extra access administrators are entrusted with. Among them are watching the page maintenance debates and Watercooler discussions and carrying out the consensus of the community therein, keeping an eye on new and changed articles to swiftly delete vandalism, and meeting user requests for help that require administrative access. Since administrators are expected to be experienced members of the community, users seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information. In general, administrators acting in this role are neutral. They do not have any direct involvement in the issues they are helping people with. What can administrators do? The wiki software has a few important features that are restricted to only administrators. *Edit fully protected pages. *Protect and unprotect pages. *Delete pages, including images, and their history. *View and restore deleted pages, including images, and their history. *Block and unblock users, IP address, and IP ranges. *Revert pages quickly via the rollback method. **One-click rollback is mainly intended for vandalism, spam, etc. Disputed content deserves an explanation, either in the edit summary or on the talk page, and it is not nice to omit that (either by rolling back, or by leaving the summary field blank). *Move files, and suppress the creation of a redirect when moving any page. *Change the text and style of the interface by editing the pages in the MediaWiki namespace (for all messages and interface settings, see Warning: very large page). *Can view to see pages which may be more vulnerable to vandalism. *Can ban and unban users from the wiki chat. *Can assign and remove the chatmoderator, rollback, and custodian user rights. *Determine consensus in discussions (while not a tool, it is still an ability reserved only for administrators). How do I become an administrator? If you have been around for a while, other users will notice your good work. If another user notices this work, they may nominate you and add your name to RuneScape:Requests for adminship. Discussion will then take place by fellow editors in order to determine if there is consensus that you should become an administrator. Be careful, please! If you are granted access, we ask that you exercise care in using these functions, especially the ability to delete pages and their history, to delete images, and the ability to block users. You may benefit from reading the Administrators' reading list on Wikipedia before using any of your administrative abilities. I need help from an administrator Sometimes in the course of editing content on a wiki you need access to some of the special protected functions of an administrator even though you haven't gone through the process of becoming an administrator yet. For most reasonable requests that will be seen by all of the administrators (instead of just on their individual talk pages), please make a request on RuneScape:Administrator requests. You can also bring up issues that may require administrator intervention, or perhaps you've simply made a whole bunch of mistakes and may need an experienced editor to help clean up a bunch of pages you've created by mistake. *To request a page be deleted, see the instructions at RuneScape:Criteria for speedy deletion. *To request a file (or page) be renamed, see the instructions at RuneScape:Criteria for speedy move. *To request a vandal be blocked, report them at RuneScape:Counter-Vandalism Unit. Use '''only' for vandals that need to be blocked.'' Access types Types of identified users, listed here in roughly ascending order of number of tools, include: *'IP addresses' - Visitors who haven't "signed in" can still do most things, including editing articles. *'Registered/Logged-in users' can do everything IP addresses can do, but they can also upload files, move pages, hold a watchlist, maintain preferences, and mark edits as minor. Registered accounts four or more days old can edit semi-protected pages (as long as they also have 10 edits) - . See to sign yourself up! *'Authenticated' has been vetted by Wikia, as being a legitimate industry source (for example, a celebrity or a game developer). *'Bots' have their edits flagged with a "b" in recent changes and whose edits are hidden by default. A minor edit made by a bot to a user talk page will not trigger any notifications. See for a list and RuneScape:Bots. *'Administrators (sysops)' see the What can administrators do? section and for official list of all administrators. Active and inactive status are listed below. *'CheckUsers' can find a user's IP address, or accounts used by an IP address. See RuneScape:CheckUser for more information, and for a list. *'Bureaucrats' can turn other users into bots, sysops, and bureaucrats. They can also revoke any of these powers except bureaucrat. Changes to user rights are recorded in . *'VSTF' (Volunteer Spam Task Force) are volunteers who have been given global sysop powers. They are not legal workers of Wikia. Their role is to fight vandalism and spam across Wikia. See for a list as well as Help:SpamTaskForce. *'Helpers' have global bureaucrat powers, but are interns or volunteers working for Wikia and not regular editors. Helpers can make users part of the bot, rollback, sysop and bureaucrat groups, as well as remove all of these. See for a list as well as Wikia Helper Group. Helpers can be identified by the tag in their signatures. *'Wikia Staff' are employees of Wikia Inc. They have global bureaucrat rights, and therefore can edit the user right on all wikis. In addition, they can see the IP of any logged in user using the checkuser function. They can also use the suppress function to delete revisions of a page so that only other Wikia staff members can view or restore them. See for a list as well as Wikia Staff. Staff can be identified by the tag in their signatures. For a full list of tools and abilities available to all user groups, see . List of administrators Bureaucrats Administrators Remember, it's not a big deal Adminship is not a big deal. It's not a position of power, authority, or anything of the sort, but merely being trusted with a few abilities that can cause damage in the wrong hands. See also * RuneScape:Requests for adminship * Administrators